Lair
Lair of Darkness With the release of "Structure Deck: Lair of Darkness", many decks have been formulated with the new play style released in this deck. Many mixtures have been created with these cards, ranging from an Anti-Meta Deck with "Ties of the Brethren", to being combined with "Infernoid" monsters. The play style of the deck may have many different goals, but has very similar play styles between them, often based on Tributing your opponent's monsters with "Lair of Darkness" and Tributing your monsters to Special Summon "Darkest Diabolos, Lord of the Lair". Destiny HERO Engine "Destiny HERO" monsters with "Destiny Draw" and "Allure of Darkness" to draw extra cards. The Destiny HEROs also have very interesting utilities as well. * "Destiny HERO - Malicious": Offers extra tribute bodies for "Ahrima", "Lilith", or "Diabolos". * "Destiny HERO - Dark Angel": While both effects are not very good normally, Lair has use for both of it's effects. Both Players Placing a Normal Spell on top of their deck, and while your opponent is under the effect of "Eradicator Epidemic Virus" or if you have set one of your "Mind Crush", you can skip your opponent's Draw Phase effectively while you gain a power card next turn. Also Using this card to revive a Destiny HERO to your opponent is ignored while you control Lair of Darkness with a Tributing monster. * "Destiny HERO - Plasma": Plasma may not tribute to activate an effect, but this card does Tribute to activate Darkest Diabolos while tributing the tokens you generate with Lair of Darkness. This card can also be recycled with Duke Shade and can be discarded with Trade-In. * "Destiny HERO - Defender": A "Full Force Virus" material that also can be searched with Ahrima. * Other Destiny HEROs of your choice can be helpful as well. Destrudo/Darkwurm Engine "Destrudo the Lost Dragon's Frisson" and "Supreme King Dragon Darkwurm" have many utilities for this deck, they also have fantastic synergy with "Dragon Ravine" and "Dragon Shrine" that can also send Darkest Diabolos as well. "Destrudo" allows you to make level 7 Synchro Monsters such as "Ancient Fairy Dragon" (Traditional Format Only) to replace your "Dragon Ravine" for a Lair of Darkness. You can also make other options such as "Dark Strike Fighter" to help tribute DARK monsters, "Black Rose Dragon" for massive removal, or "Odd-Eyes Meteorburst Dragon" to summon "Supreme King Gate Zero" which can be searched with "Darkwurm" for a Rank 7 Xyz Monster. Darkwurm also can summon itself from the GY, giving you an extra tribute body. Vampire Engine Lilith having the ability to recruit "Vampire Awakening" from your deck to summon "Vampire Familiar" or "Vampire Retainer" to start a Vampire Engine in your deck for additional Tribute bodies and disruption searches such as "Vampire Domination" or "Vampire Fraulein". Also many of your Tribute Summons in the Vampire engine such as "Vampire Duke", "Shadow Vampire", "Vampire Vamp", and "Vampire Scarlet Scourge" can also trigger the Summoning effect of Diabolos. Grinning Grave Virus also has great synergy with "Vampire Kingdom". Also the Vampires have a massive range of Virus Targets * Crush Card Virus: Vampire Familiar, "Vampire Baby" * Deck Devastation Virus: Shadow Vampire, Vampire Duke, "Vampire Genesis", "Vampire Lord", "Vampire Grace", "Vampire Red Baron", Vampire Scarlet Scourge, "Vampire Vamp", "Vampire Dragon", "Vampire Grimson", "Vampire's Curse", "Dhampir Vampire Sheridan", "Crimson Knight Vampire Bram" * Eradicator Epidemic Virus: Vampire Genesis, Vampire's Curse (After using it's effect), Dhampir Vampire Sheridan, Crimson Knight Vampire Bram * Full Force Virus: Vampire Fraulein, Vampire Vamp, Vampire Genesis, Vampire Scarlet Scourge Extra Mentions * "Armageddon Knight": Allows you to send cards such as Darkest Diabolos, Destrudo, or any other synergistic DARK monster for instant setup and plays. * "Blackwing - Steam the Cloak": A DARK monster can tribute something from the field to Special Summon itself, this can also help setup Darkest Diabolos on field. Weaknesses Almost all Lair decks variants depend on the GY, so cards like "Macro Cosmos" or "Banisher of the Radiance" can ruin the deck. The deck also needs their tributing to happen, so cards like "Fog King" and "Mask of Restrict" can cause this deck to be locked out of their effects and most of their summons. The deck also needs to keep Lair of Darkness up as long as possible, so Spell/Trap removal can really slow your deck down. The main issue with Lair however is not based on cards your opponent has against you, rather, that your cards need to be drawn in the right order for you to do much of anything. Without Lilith or Ahrima, Lair of Darkness, and Darkest Diabolos, most of your hands do very little if not anything at all. Meaning the deck has extreme consistency issues. This is why most suggestions for the deck are based off of adding additional engines to it, so you can play the hands that would normally not be playable and engines that give you card advantage in case your Lair engine fails or gets interrupted. Another major weakness of the deck is that without other engines, the deck has effectively no way to gain additional card advantage outside of token generation. While viruses can force a major or even game winning amount of minus on your opponent, if the virus you activate doesn't affect your opponent, you could easily lose because you have no way to gain back the cards you lost.